The One With All the Hope
by poeticgrace
Summary: Nine-year-old Emma helps the gang remember a fateful Tuesday ten years ago. ONE SHOT.


"Mommy, where were you?"

Rachel looked up at a very serious nine-year-old sitting at the kitchen table and frowned. She looked like a little journalist with her spiral notebook and freshly sharpened yellow pencil. Emma was working on a daunting school project that involved interviewing family and friends about a day that most New Yorkers would rather not relive. Just a few days shy of the momentous occasion, her daughter's school thought it was critical that a bunch of innocent third graders be forced to learn what it was like for their loved ones to endure such a tragedy. Rachel's only solace was that Emma had never had to live in a world on a day like that yet.

"Well, sweetie, I was at home still in the apartment I shared with Uncle Joey," Rachel answered as she took off her apron and threw it on the counter. She slowly poured herself a cup of coffee and came over to sit next to Emma. Her daughter chewed absently on the end of a pencil, looking every bit as studious as her father. "I was getting ready to go to work when your daddy called me. He told me to go wake up Uncle Joey and to turn on the television. He was on his way downtown when it happened."

Emma carefully recorded her mother's recollection of the day's events in her wide-lined notebook. "Why was Daddy going town?" she asked without looking up from her notebook.

"Ben had a spelling bee that morning at his school, but after it happened, it got cancelled. Your dad caught a cab to head back to the Village so that he could be with everyone. Aunt Phoebe was at home, too, but Aunt Monica and Uncle Chandler were already at work. It took them awhile to make it back to the apartment because the trains weren't running after awhile."

Rachel could still remember calling Monica on her cell phone and trying to find a way to get her back down to their apartment building. Chandler had ended up walking for like fifty blocks in his brand new dress shoes. "When everyone was finally here, we didn't sit in front of the TV. We could hear it for ourselves outside," Rachel remembered. "We all sat together on the fire escape. The smoke was really thick. The whole city was dark for a long time because of it, and then, suddenly, it was lighter grey again."

Emma stopped writing for a moment and looked at her mom. "Did you know anyone there, Mommy?"

Rachel had known some people who worked at the World Trade Center. Most New Yorkers did. Some of them lived and some of them didn't. She wasn't sure that giving her daughter the specifics was really the point. Instead, she only nodded silently before telling her daughter they needed to get a move on. "Your dad will be home in a few minutes. You can ask him more questions then," Rachel told her as she drained the last of her coffee.

"What do you remember the most about that day, Mommy?"

"I remember a lot of things," she told her honestly. "I mean, everyone was scared and sad and angry. But the thing I remember the most is how we all came together, not just us but the whole city. It reminded me why I loved New York so much." Rachel paused for a moment before ruffling her daughter's hair. "Now, why don't you clear off the table and go wash your hands. Dinner is almost ready."

Emma escaped upstairs toward her bedroom, leaving Rachel alone to contemplate in silence. She was just getting the food off the stove finally when Ross came in. Rachel sat down the spatula and came over to greet her husband of four years with a long hug and lingering kiss. "Emma is playing investigative reporter again," Rachel told him as she pulled away. There had been a lot of interviews like this courtesy of Mrs. Appleton, her teacher.

"About Sunday?" Ross asked as he sampled the sauce and nodded in approval. "Did you tell her…"

"Bits and pieces," Rachel answered. She moved past him to finish setting the table. "I told her about you coming back to the apartment and how we all sat on the fire escape. She doesn't need to know about Mon."

After dinner, Emma successfully cornered her father and told him that it was his turn to be interviewed. Emma was more curious about what he had seen in the weeks after, and Ross talked about standing in line to donate blood, letting one of his co-workers stay with him after his apartment building was rendered inhabitable a few blocks away from the site and going to a candlelight vigil in Central Park a month after it happened. "People were nicer," Ross told his daughter with a smile. "There were flags everywhere, I remember that. It was nice to see the city come together."

"Daddy, can I ask you a question?" she asked seriously. "Why do you think they did this?"

Ross looked at his daughter sadly. She was so innocent, far too young to understand the implications of emotion and conviction. "I honestly don't know, Em," he told her truthfully. "I don't think I want to be able to understand it. "

The next afternoon, Emma insisted that Rachel take her across town so that she could interview Phoebe. She was working at a holistic spa now, a really cool place that let her schedule appointments around her five-year-old daughter's preschool schedule."Auntie Phoebe!" Emma shrieked as she came into the private room and hugged the blonde tightly. "How's Lillie?"

"She's doing well," Phoebe said of her daughter. Emma had insisted that Rachel let her go inside alone to talk to Phoebe. She was taking this project very seriously. "Your mom said you have some questions to ask me."

And so, Emma proceeded to interview Phoebe about her version of that Tuesday morning. Phoebe talked about walking back to the apartment and hearing updates from televisions and radios playing the storefronts. She talked about calling her biological mother and how they all talked to their parents. She talked about Rachel worrying about being pregnant and all the smoke in the air, and when asked what she remembered most, Phoebe couldn't help but smile a little bit. "I remember that Joey wasn't hungry. I think it's the first time I ever heard him say that."

Emma couldn't imagine a world where Joey didn't get hungry, and that thought alone made her insist on calling Joey next. He was in Los Angeles filming a new movie and wouldn't be back in the city before she had to turn in the project. Out of all of the friends, Joey was Emma's absolute favorite. He always gave her the best presents and knew a lot of celebrities. Plus, he was kind of cute, and she had a little bit of a crush on him.

"Hey, Em," Joey said over the phone. The connection was a little staticky, and Emma could hear all the commotion of being on a movie set in the background. "So Aunt Phoebe told you that I didn't eat, huh?"

"Yeah, she said you didn't eat lunch or dinner that night."

"That's true, but then Aunt Monica made my favorite meatball sandwiches the next day for lunch and I had to eat one. We all helped her and then we took them over to her restaurant. They donated a lot of food for the firemen and policemen who were working."

"Did you go see it?"

"No," Joey said quietly. The truth was that a lot of New Yorkers like Joey couldn't go down there for weeks. It had taken him nearly three months before he could get even within a few blocks of the site. He loved New York more than anyone. He didn't want to remember his city in a pile of rubble. "Not right away, at least. Eventually, yeah, I made it down there. It was hard, but it was the right thing."

"What do you mean, the right thing?"

"I couldn't let them take away my city from me," he told her. "I had to show New York I still loved it more than anything else in the world."

That same evening, after Ross had pumped her full of pizza while Rachel worked late, Emma sat in her dad's study to call her favorite aunt and uncle. Chandler was the one to answer the phone, and the two of them traded silly jokes before Emma jumped right into it. "Can you tell me what it was like walking home that day?"

Chandler still had the shoes, those worn brown loafers. They were important to him for reasons he wasn't sure, but he kept them tucked in the top of his closet in an old box. They told a story, his story, from that day. That's what he talked about with her, the shoes and how they hurt his feet and how he'd had blisters for like a month after.

"Were you scared Uncle Chandler?"

"Yeah, Em, I was scared," he told her honestly. "I was scared until I saw your Aunt Monica again and until everyone was together at the apartment. I was scared for a long time after that."

"What were you scared of?"

"Oh, the obvious, I suppose," he told her. "And I was scared for Ben and for you, that you would have to grow up in a world like that. I was scared about a lot of things."

What he couldn't say, what none of them would tell her, was that he was scared that Monica had been so close when it happened. He couldn't tell her how Monica had been at a restaurant supply store meeting with a vender that morning and how no one could reach her for nearly two hours. He couldn't tell her how tightly he had held his new wife when she showed up or how bad she was shaking. He couldn't tell her about washing the ashes out of Monica's hair or the way her clothes still smelled like smoke after washing them twice. These were things a nine-year-old couldn't, _shouldn't_ understand. Finally, once she was satisfied, she asked for Aunt Monica so that she could finish her project and go to bed. Monica was pretty short with her answers, but Emma felt like she knew enough. "Is there anything else?" Emma asked just before she hung up the phone.

"People always ask where you were and what you were doing when it happened. I think the more important question is the one you asked: how did it feel? That's what I remember the most about that day. Amidst all that sadness, I saw a little girl in a red dress carrying a little flag down the street in front of the apartment and I felt something I didn't think I'd feel on that day. I felt hope. That's what people should remember. They should remember that we overcame it and we had hope. We still have hope. That's what I want you to take away from this."

That is the last thing Emma hears about the subject and the very first thing she mentions in her presentation that Friday afternoon. She tells the stories as they were told to her and shows photographs that her dad lent to her. She talks about the shoes and Joey not eating and her parents' phone call. And then she talks about the little girl in the red dress and holds up her last prop. It's a simple piece of white poster board with only one word written on it: HOPE.


End file.
